Sipsmith’s journey from garage to global domination. Ask anyone in spirits circles about the origins of the UK’s gin boom in the past decade and they will inevitably mention Sipsmith, the distillery that first began producing spirits in a garage in London’s Hammersmith in 2009. It’s come a long way since then and has been instrumental in breaking open the …
Blood-testing startup Thriva is selling self-analysis
Thriva wants people to give it regular blood samples in exchange for charts on their health. But can it reach anyone other than early adopters and hypochondriacs? A few days after drawing a vial of blood, a Thriva customer is sent a variety of charts and some snippets of lifestyle and dietary advice. This health MOT happens every three months …
Hipsters, hackers and hustlers: networking event for coders and founders
When Courier’s senior reporter went co-founder dating ‘It’s normally quite high energy,’ one guy tells me. Looking around the half-empty room at Google Campus, I am unconvinced. It’s 8.30pm on a Wednesday night. I’ve been sidling up to strangers with my best awkward party side-shuffle for an hour, and I’m yet to find anyone I really want to give my business …
Monzo’s founder Tom Blomfield: the quiet coder turned enemy of the big banks
Monzo’s founder has combined Silicon Valley zeal with a predilection for publicity to position himself as digital banking’s consumer champion. Will he pull it off? Monzo is hiring. Monzo, it seems, is always hiring; the newly-licensed UK bank is arguably the hottest startup in London right now. ‘We’re working to become the Google or Facebook of banking,’ runs the job …
Two is the magic number: business co-founders share the secrets of their partnerships’ success
The relationship between business co-founders can be the most emotionally demanding in a person’s life. It can also be the factor which determines the success or failure of a company: the double act. In 2009, the Blackberry was so popular it was being referred to as the Crackberry. It accounted for half of all smartphones being sold. It was even credited …
Why tech startups are advertising on the London underground
They’re unsophisticated, untargeted and seriously old school: so why do London’s tech startups still love tube advertising? Strange as it may seem in the age of Facebook and Google ads, a growing number of London startups are turning to tube advertising to attract new customers and help their brands stand out from the masses. ‘The tube cuts through the noise,’ …
Profile: How Wetransfer founder Nalden made file sharing cool
The founder of Wetransfer first made his name with a cult nineties hip-hop blog. Now, his file transfer service has gained a global troupe of fans by turning what could be a boring service into a cultural cornerstone. For his 21st birthday, Ronald Hans threw a party. It was held in one of the clubs he often went to – …
Building a business on blockchain technology
Provenance is a business built on blockchain technology – but it doesn’t sell itself that way. Unlike many founders, Jessi Baker didn’t set out to start a business. Instead, while working on a computer science PhD looking at non-financial applications for bitcoin, she realised that blockchain technology could be used to track supply chains. From the route a t-shirt takes …
How Bento Bio turned its home laboratory prototype into a real product
Between closing a Kickstarter campaign and building its commercial product, home DNA lab Bento Bio discovered its manufacturing costs had risen by 400%. Bento Bio doesn’t want to be a product manufacturer. It wants to do for genetics what Raspberry Pi has done for computing. The big (and rather audacious) idea is to remove some of the mystery around the …
Making micropayments work for journalism
Blendle is applying the iTunes model to journalism. But can it make micropayments work? As print circulations fall and ad blockers become ubiquitous, the question of paywalls is something most, if not all, newspaper publishers are pondering. One startup is offering a happy medium: a platform that lets users pay to read single articles that would usually sit behind a …